Daily Signet

Self-portrait of Pico della Mirandola

Will Durant says that the essence of humanism is that belief of which the Renaissance philosopher, Pico della Mirandola seems never to have doubted, “that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality—no language they have spoken, nor oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever been passionate, or expended time and zeal.” For Pico, the studia humanitatis was not a matter of surveying knowledge and collecting up answers. As he searched the ancient manuscripts, he was not so much interested in cataloguing what the ancients knew as in knowing who the ancients were. For Pico, spending time with the ancients was not a matter of extracting information, but rather of expanding his own imagination and vision by surveying Esi Umano, of what it is to be human. Pico della Mirandola passionately worked to resurrect the ancients for their inspiration and timeless ability to infuse what we deem unimaginable with the vitality of their imagination and the mystery of their creativity.

Teri Martin